some saw the sun
by lydiamaartin
Summary: "Pirates can be polite, princess. You should have seen me in your mother's court." / Before reaching the beanstalk, Killian and Aurora talk in the light of the sunrise about queens and magic lockets and the years gone by. - KillianAurora


**disclaimer:** i don't own anything except the names for aurora's parents (her mother's name, i took from giambattista basile's version of the tale).

**notes:** this is au (especially in terms of killian's past, which could technically work with canon if i bothered to try to develop my ideas), set right before tallahassee.

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Days always dawned bright and golden in her childhood, Aurora remembers this much. Her times as the princess of a kingdom still alive are hazy in her mind, tangled in the depths of fire and darkness and nightmares, but she remembers easily the sight of the sun, barely gold and breaking over the horizon, and she remembers her mother's hands, soft and terribly gentle in her endless curls, and her father's laugh, deep-throated and hearty and always crinkling his eyes.

On the way to the beanstalk, the sun breaks in shimmers of golden light above the hills, the first time it has done it so prettily since she awoke, and she remembers vividly another Aurora, younger and sweeter and daintier, standing on the balcony of a castle she cannot recall and looking up into the face of the dawn. A little girl's voice rings in her ears: "Mama, look, it's so pretty!"

Her mother had smiled, ran a hand through her daughter's hair, breathed a kiss onto her temple. All this and more are memories lost inside her fire-filled dreams. "Of course it's pretty – you are named after the dawn, my dear," she had said, and Aurora wishes she could smile the way that she had upon hearing those words, once upon a time.

"Why did you name me after the dawn?" she had asked, childhood curiosity tinging her voice in a way it never would again, because there is nothing left of childhood when you are cursed to sleep for years.

"Because you will always rise like the sun," her mother had told her, a rose-glossed smile on her lips – the most genuine one, which she reserved only for her husband and daughter. "Even though the sun may set and darkness may win for a time, Aurora, you will always rise again, brighter than ever."

Aurora hadn't known, then, of wicked witches and sleeping curses and dreams that go up in flames. She hadn't known that true love's kiss could be given by a prince who would be marked for death, and she hadn't known that there were any other worlds from which evil could appear.

She looks around and sees her companions still sleeping, blind to the beauty of the sunrise, and she wonders if she'll ever truly sleep again.

-:-

The princess, of all people, is the only one awake when Killian opens his eyes to the morning. She is settled beneath the shade of an old oak tree, her figure almost worryingly tiny against the trunk, and her entire being is focused in on something she holds cupped in her palms. Her hands are tiny, too – he remembers this from when they were warm and gentle on his body as she rolled him over, back in the village he had watched Cora destroy.

She doesn't notice he's awake until he speaks. "Princess," he begins, but his voice is raspy from disuse in the night. He clears his throat as she looks over, her eyes far more guarded than he would expect from the sweet, innocent princess Cora had assured him she must be. "When did you wake up?"

Aurora stares at him for a moment that stretches long enough to make him feel uncomfortable – if he were a lesser man, he would have looked away. Finally, she breaks their gaze and looks back down at her hands. "I never slept," she informs him in a tone so low he has to strain to hear it. "I never do anymore."

Killian pauses, unsure where to take the conversation after this burst of unexpected honesty. She isn't paying attention to him anymore, which bothers him more than he cares to admit – he had thought that, of all the girls, she would be the easiest to fool with his charm, but despite the fact that she seems more trusting of him than the others, she doesn't make it easy for him to flirt.

"May I ask what you're holding?" he says finally after going over several other replies that he had discarded for being inadequate in getting her attention again. The question does the trick, as she looks up at him again, her hand curling into a fist around whatever she has in her palm. Her eyes seem bluer than the skies in the newborn shine of the sun, bright enough to pierce his soul and make him feel like he was being judged – and found wanting.

"We're not at court," she says instead of answering, her voice almost dismissive in a way he hadn't thought she could manage. "You don't need to be so polite. You're a pirate, aren't you?"

He frowns before he can help it. "Pirates can be polite, princess," he says, more offended than he probably should be. "You should have seen me in your mother's court."

The words slip out almost involuntarily, though he's sure that some part of him was eagerly anticipating her surprise at this statement. Sure enough, her eyes widen and her next words come out breathlessly: "You knew my mother?"

He leans over, ever closer to her, feeling his usual smirk and confidence return to him at her captivation. "Of course I did, sweetheart," he says, flashing her his most dazzling smile as if to prove his point. "Your mother was the most beautiful queen in all the kingdoms, and pirates seek treasures like no other."

Aurora's next breath is sharp, catching in her throat. Killian finds himself watching the movement of her lips much more closely than is necessarily polite. "When were you at court? Before I was born?"

"Many years before you were born," he confirms, tilting his head close enough that he can see a glint of gold in her still-clenched palm. "I was there for… business reasons," he says vaguely, even though he's fairly certain that she's smart enough to understand his meaning.

Her eyebrows draw down, just like he expected. "You were there to steal from us," she suggests, and he chuckles. Cora might have underestimated this one, he muses.

"Indeed, but never fear, your mother was as astute as you," he says with a wink, which she ignores soundly. "She figured me out within my first ten minutes in her presence, but she allowed me to stay to, in her words, experience the treasures of court that I would never have. And, of course, she assigned a knight to be a bodyguard and stop me from stealing anything – funnily enough, she picked the knight she would go on to marry."

An involuntary smile appears on Aurora's face. "You knew my father, too?" she asks, looking at him as if she cannot quite believe his existence, let alone his words. It startles him that he enjoys her marveling gaze – it's not as girlishly innocent as he would have thought, but instead it's bright in a way that warms him.

"I did," he confirms, the memory of her parents' laughter pressing insistently at the forefront of his mind, even though he's kept all his times at her mother's court locked away in a distant corner of his mind. The last thing he needs to remember on his quest for vengeance is the easy smiles and friendship of two people who shouldn't have given him a second thought, and yet they did. "Have I told you enough secrets to open up your palm, princess?"

She blinks at him, and for a second that lasts far too long, he's afraid she's going to close up again, but then her fingers unfurl to reveal the object in her hand. The gold glitters under the rising sun, and his breath does something funny in his throat when he realizes that it's her mother's favorite necklace, the same one Talia had once touched with a smile when he asked her why it was the only thing that she let adorn her neck.

"Your mother's locket," he says before she can get any words out, his gaze still locked on her palm. The necklace itself is not extraordinary, a simple chain of gold with a small circular pendant that had tiny blue stones he knew to be diamonds embedded in the shape of the sun. What was inside it, Talia had told him, was the important part.

"Did she tell you about it?" Aurora asks him softly, jolting him back into reality. "She gave it to me on my birthday before I was cursed, but she never got around to telling me how to open it. I've tried every way I can think of, and – "

Her voice breaks off when Killian reaches over and cups her hand in his. He wonders if his skin feels as warm to her as she does to him. "It's actually rather comically simple," he tells her with his most genuine grin in days. Aurora's eyes are fixed on him, curious and wondering, and it fills him with a sort of pleasure he hasn't felt in quite some time.

Gently, he lifts her hands up to his face and bows his head until his lips brush across the pendant. He waits until he hears the whisper of air that meant he was successful, and then looks up at her. Aurora's breath seems fragile when it escapes her as she sees the opened locket lying in her palm.

As she bends her head down to pore over the contents inside the locket, it occurs to him that there was a much less intimate way for him to have shown her how to open the magical lock her father had placed on the necklace. And yet, looking at the way she smiles upon seeing the pictures and pressed rose petal perfectly preserved for her, he can't bring himself to regret touching her.

"Thank you," she murmurs, closing the locket with a snap and looking back up at him. "Will you tell me about my parents?"

Ordinarily, he wouldn't bother with a girl as delicate and soft as Princess Aurora, not when he much prefers the company of women who could handle their liquor and match him in curses, but Aurora is Talia's daughter and Julian's daughter, and she is stronger than most people he has ever met. Denying her seems an impossibility, so he settles in comfortably next to her and begins to tell her the story of the last time he visited the Enchanted Forest, before Regina, before Cora, before everything.

"Your mother," he says slowly in the morning light, memories melting on his tongue, "loved to dance."

-:-

Queen Talia's court had never been anything less than magical, and Killian will go to his grave swearing this truth. She had no witch's blood in her veins, no enchantments at her fingertips, and yet the way she smiled could make even the hardest-hearted soldier put down his sword and love again. She had a way of making you feel as though you were the most important person in the universe, like the sun rose only for you, and the amazing part was that she was always utterly and absolutely sincere – unless she was playing you like a fiddle.

She had passed this trait onto her daughter, whose blue eyes mirror hers down to the last sparkle and whose smile is tinged with Talia's beauty. Aurora, he thinks, has the same remarkable ability to hold the world in her gaze and then make you feel like it was all at your fingertips, and if he was being honest, it was quite unnerving. Her curls are the color of coffee instead of honey, but there is no mistaking Talia's blood when she smiles at you.

"Has anyone ever told you that you look like your mother?" he asks her as the sun finally works its magic and awakens their companions from their slumber. Aurora's eyes haven't left him since he began telling her of the wonder that was Talia's court, of the timeless romance of her courtship with Julian, of the way she put all her subjects at ease just by being in her presence. Her hands are still clasped around her mother's locket, which she has looped around her neck, and with the sunshine around her, she looks strikingly like her mother.

"No," she says, surprising him out of his observations of her beauty, "everyone says I look like my father. I have his hair, his nose, his jaw – " She stops when she notices Killian shaking his head. Everyone in her kingdom must be fools, he thinks to himself.

"You have her eyes," he tells her, watching the way her face brightens, "and her smile, and the way she held herself. Like a queen." In the distance, Snow White opens her eyes and stares at them blearily, uncomprehending, but he doesn't care enough to pay her any attention.

Aurora laughs a little too bitterly for a princess and says, "My kingdom is dead. There's nothing for me to be the queen of anymore." Her fingers slip from the necklace and land in her lap, twisting around the purple silk of her dress in a gesture so nervous that he has to reach over and place his hands over hers to make her stop.

"Come on, now, princess," he says with one of his most charming smiles, hoping to put her at ease. "That isn't true – I'm sure there are several animals out there who would be happy to accept your rule. Don't you princesses have some sort of special connection with nature?" A part of him wonders if the sunrise combined with Aurora had somehow blunted his edges, made him softer and gentler and more peaceful in some way. The majority of him is focused on how she sounds when she laughs.

"Don't be stupid," she chides him, and then her eyes dart around and she pulls her hands away. Killian looks over and sees Mulan and Emma both awake and frowning in their direction. Snow has busied herself with finding them all some breakfast and so has missed the judging party.

"Are you going to pretend you don't like me now that the others are awake?" he asks, and he means it to be teasing, but it doesn't quite come out that way. Aurora eyes him speculatively, bracing herself backwards on her palms.

"Maybe," she says with a smile. "Or maybe once you prove yourself trustworthy I'll let myself like you publically. If that ever happens."

"Are you doubting my trustworthiness?"

"Just a little."

For some reason, he finds himself unable to stop smiling at her.

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**a/n:** i'm not entirely sure what this is but i know it's just a bunch of fluff that i wrote at midnight whoops. if you liked it for some reason, please drop me a review and give me some feedback? i'd really appreciate it :)

please **DON'T** favorite without reviewing, thank you.


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